An ode to the Maximum City of hopes and heartbreak

Murzban F. Shroff's new collection of Mumbai stories chronicles the decline of the city, while celebrating its resilience

- Somak Ghoshal

Few Indian fiction writers have taken up the mantle of being the chronicler of their home cities with as much zest as Murzban F. Shroff has. For the last few years, his short stories, collected in multiple volumes, have captured the pulse of Bombay, now Mumbai, with the acuity of a city reporter, the passion of a resident civic activist, and the shrewd eye of an inveterate storyteller.

Shroff's latest volume, Muses Over Mumbai, a collection of 17 stories, proves his gift for sniffing tales out of every nook and cranny of his rapidly transforming home. The faceless millions that come under his scrutiny become fodder for his fictional mill, be it a bank teller always occupied with her meals, or the man who crushes piles of garbage every night with his JCB for the trucks to carry it away.

A strong thread of civic-minded concern runs through nearly all the stories in the volume, but it is usually a patina that hides other human complications. Ruffled Feathers, the opening story set in a posh high-rise in South Bombay, is ostensibly about a pigeon disrupting the peace of the residents. Even as the well-heeled neighbours try to put up a united front against the menace, longstanding tensions begin to chip away at the fragile foundation of faux harmony on which they stand.